APS president calls for clearer guidance from Building Safety Regulator following the publication of the Grenfell Phase 2 Inquiry report.
The report, published in September, concluded that the 72 deaths were avoidable and criticised multiple entities and individuals connected with the tower’s management and refurbishment. It considered progress made to enhance building and fire safety and further change required.
“The Phase 2 report was yet another call to act, and in my view that has to start with getting to grips with the low levels of competence,” said Snelling. “As far as I can see there is no evidence that the culture in the industry has changed, seven years after Grenfell.
“There is a reluctance for organisations to embrace the management of competence. They are all waiting for something to happen: the regulator to tell them what they need to do to comply; clients to send them pre-qualifications, etc. The problem is nobody, including the Regulator, wants to say what good looks like and get things started.”
Very little interest
Snelling said a case in point was the fact that three new registers for principal designers to provide recognition of their competence – including one set up by APS a year ago – had received very little interest.
The expectation is that firms looking to be appointed as principal designers would be able to point to key staff being accepted on to a competence register.
“There were fewer than 75 individuals across the three of them. If it really mattered there would be a lot more people on these registers,” he said. “We cannot change as an industry until we understand what competence looks like, how you measure it and how organisations need to manage it.
“The Regulator needs to give clear direction on its expectations for competence and then ensure this is met when schemes go through the different gateways and in safety case submissions.”
Guidance undermining competence
Under the Building Safety Act clients are required to appoint designers and contractors who are competent in all projects and building control inspectors must consider competence as part of their role. Yet Snelling says that guidance from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – at the time still the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – in the form of a circular letter appears to be undermining this.
It said: “Other than the checks being carried out for higher-risk building work when applications are made to the Regulator, we are not expecting proactive inspections of the dutyholder and competence regime.”
Instead, the guidance pointed out that “when there is a failure to comply with building regulations, the dutyholder and competence regulations will enable the building control authority to track back through the design and building processes for the project for each of the relevant dutyholders and take appropriate action for non-compliance”.
Snelling said: “There is an assumption in this statement that the fear of being found wanting in a future prosecution will drive the industry to comply. I see no evidence that this currently the case.”
